Palin’s Folly

So I’m currently suffering my way through Sarah Palin’s book, in a style not altogether dissimilar to Jesus’ ordeal in the hands of the Roman Empire. I won’t pollute the air around here with too many details from the book, but I was amused to see that my former governor repeats the cherished myth that Americans mocked 19th century maverick William Seward for writing a Facebook note about “death panels” arranging the purchase of Alaska in 1867.

Critics ridiculed Seward for spending so much on a remote chunk of earth that some thought of as just a frozen, inhospitable wilderness that was dark half the year. The $7.2 million purchas became known as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’ Icebox.” Seward withstood the mocking and disdain because of his vision for Alaska. He knew her potential to help secure the nation with her resources and strategic position on the globe. . . . [D]ecades later, he was posthumously vindicated, as purveyors of unpopular common sense often are.

As Richard Welch pointed out more than a half century ago in the pages of the American Slavic and East European Review — a title that I’ll concede is likely not a part of Sarah Palin’s titanic reading list — the “Seward’s Folly” narrative has very little evidence to support it. Americans in fact knew quite a bit about the Russian territory prior to its purchase. Anyone connected to the whaling and fishing industries of New England, or to the West Coast fur trade, would have understood the potential value of securing Alaska; anyone who appreciated the value of thwarting British ambitions to round out their Canadian empire would have been pleased as well. (This would have included those Americans who still subscribed to Polkian-era fantasies about capturing British Columbia up to the 54th parallel. With the purchase of Alaska, the westernmost British possessions were now in “an American vice,” as Seattle’s Puget Sound Gazette theorized.) Moreover, there was a great deal of emerging scientific literature on the territory, with recent expeditions funded by Smithsonian Institute as well as by other public and private backers.

So far as public opinion was concerned, most newspapers actually supported the purchase. The major exception was the New York Tribune, which was owned by Horace Greeley, a Republican who was nevertheless one of William Seward’s avowed enemies. (Greeley believed Seward had been too radical on the slavery issue, among other things). Even Democratically-aligned papers in the North — while not missing the opportunity to crack wise about polar bears and walruses — tended to support the purchase, mainly because there was no compelling reason to oppose it. And at the end of the day, the treaty with Russia passed the US Senate by a vote of 37-2, with no significant expressions of opposition during the floor debate.

What’s odd — or not, depending on what view you take of Palin’s intelligence — is that most educated Alaskans are aware of all this, at least in its broad outline. It’s taught in the schools, and the few textbooks that have been written about Alaskan history all incorporate Wright’s findings into their treatment of the Alaskan purchase. Certainly someone who claims to know and love the state as much as the abdicated governor does should know that the “Seward’s Folly” myth survives because most people outside the state know very little about Alaska and are perfectly comfortable substituting fable for fact when thinking about its history, culture and geography. But since Sarah Palin’s entire schtick requires an audience that believes the myth — that believes, for example, that we can drill the shit out of the state without wrecking its ecology — I’m not surprised that she believes it as well. It’s certainly not the only bit of nonsense she’s peddling, but it’s a revealing bit at that.

…As an added bonus, Palin describes William Seward as just the sort of “colorful” character — like Soapy Smith and Skookum Jim Mason — that the Alaskan territory attracted. I don’t think anyone has ever described Seward as “colorful,” but I’m going to assume that Palin is actually thinking of William Seward Burroughs, whose fondness for guns and drugs would indeed have suited him well for an authentic Alaskan life.

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most educated Alaskans are aware of all this, at least in its broad outline. It’s taught in the schools, and the few textbooks that have been written about Alaskan history all incorporate Wright’s findings into their treatment of the Alaskan purchase.

I will nonetheless bet you cash dollars to pins that *most* Alaskans still will claim the Steward’s Folly myth as true. Saying “it’s taught in the schools!” means *nothing*, it’s what gets repeated outside school that counts. “Steward’s Folly” is an enduring myth because it supports what *Alaskans* want to think about themselves: “they said we were crazy to come here! But we showed them!”

I haven’t been able to figure that out — I spent a stupid amount of time today trying to find some kind of original citation of that phrase, but nothing turned up. What’s interesting is that by the end of the century, you can see that the “Seward’s Folly” narrative had become pretty thoroughly enmeshed in everything that was being written about Alaska. I think some of that had to do with the territorial/statehood aspirations of Alaskans and their supporters (i.e., “look how far we’ve come from the days when no one thought this place was worth a damn”), but I wish I knew when (and from whom) the term was first used…

I think Dr. Science is on to something: not only is clinging to the “Seward’s Folly” myth* an easy way for Alaskans (of any political persuasion) to retroactively “justify” their State, and/or residence there; but it is also an easy way for Gov. Palin to evoke one of the fundamental appeals of the modern conservative Movement: i.e., a sense of victimization. Or more precisely, a sense of being unjustifiably victimized for holding ideas that they feel should be mainstream norms (but are actually out on the fringes).

*which can’t have been a total fable, could it? Surely, there had to be more than just token opposition to the acquisition of Alaska?

Who is this “Wright” person you mention? Did you mean Welch? Knowing nothing about the history of Alaska and the people who have studied it, I’m not sure if these are two different people or if it’s just a typo of sorts. Or if I just missed something obvious. That’s possible too.

Well, you’ve gotten me hooked. I did a bit of online newspaper database searching this morning (thank god for the internet). There are surprisingly few references to “Seward’s folly” in the papers I searched, none before 1880. For example, the NY Times doesn’t use the phrase until 1901. And all of these early uses I found use the term pejoratively (as in “Alaska is great, despite all that folly nonsense”).

But I did find an 1869 editorial in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper that is interesting. The article is opposing another Seward purchase–St. Thomas (owned at the time by Denmark). They say:

“But we must remind our Danish friends that the Alaska matter had gone further than that of St. Thomas, when the sense of the country was aroused to its folly. Mr. Seward, with a designated precipitation, had actually taken possession of the country; Russia had withdrawn; the inhabitants had left, and a complication had been brought about by that egregious old man that seemed to admit of no other solution. But does it follow that because the child has put his finger in the fire once, he shall, therefore, keep doing so?” (June 5, 1869, p. 178)